On the 23rd of November, the Board of Directors of the Autoridad Portuaria de Valencia (APV – Port Authority of Valencia) has approved the specifications of its northern container terminal expansion. The new terminal will be the fourth container terminal in the port of Valencia. The following details were shared by the APV:

It has been approved that companies or business groups already operating in the port of Valencia may freely submit their bids. If a winning bid is provided by an existing terminal operator, the new container terminal should provide a minimum of 50% additional capacity compared to their current one, favouring with it the increase of traffic committed in the port and the efficiency in operations due to economies of scale.

APV has elaborated on the calculations comprising the bid evaluation criteria in order to be as transparent and objective as possible. The updated bid evaluation criteria slightly increased the valuation of the Business Plan (up to 25 points) compared to the Economic Proposal (reduced to 75 points), in order to give more adequate consideration to the proposals that better concretise the achievement of the general objectives of the project.

In relation to the deadlines, it has been approved that once the Terms and Conditions have been approved by the Board of Directors, they will be published in the Official Bulletins. The APV estimates this to take place somewhere during the first two weeks of December.

Thereafter, interested parties will have 90 working days (until the first half of May) to present their offers. After analysing the bids, it is estimated that the winning proposal will be announced according to the evaluation criteria by the Board of Directors in July.